HealingHand Tech
Maintaining and motivating patient treatment progress in a remote setting
Overview
Problem
In a remote setting, therapists often face challenges in maintaining stroke patient treatment progress.
Outcome
I designed user flows and screens that focus on reflecting patient's real-time progress with the wearable usage, reducing exercise assignment friction, and motivating both therapists and patients.
Research
Identifying problem risk and clarity
We narrowed the scope to core feature first, exercise assignment building for MVP. We identified risks and clarity of the task and concluded that we needed to research to understand the problem.
2 Rounds User interviews
First, understanding the process of treating stroke patients from initial evaluation to discharge was crucial in wrapping our heads around the condition and the product we are designing. Later, we conducted a second round to further understand challenges and how the clinical portal can fit into the process. We conducted interviews with the following:
4 Occupational Therapists (OT)
2 Physical Therapists (PT)
1 Certified Hand Therapist (CHT)
1 Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP)
8 Doctoral occupational therapy students for a neuro-rehabilitation course at Howard University
Finding Synthesis -> Insights
Patient-Centric Collaboration
Therapists help patients set personalized goals that align with their daily life to ensure treatments are relevant and focused.
Incremental and Dynamic Process
Complex treatment plans are broken down into smaller, manageable steps with dynamic adjustments to make process easier and less aversive.
Progress & Compliance Tracking
Being able to keep track of patient progress through the wearable device data is integral to validating treatment effectiveness and future planning.
Design
Patient-centric Collaboration
We outlined an the Patient Page structure in 3 columns to maintain the patient-progress-centric focus from the Patient Tab -> Patient progress workflow -> Communication between therapist and patient:
Incremental and Dynamic Process
For exercise programs, we designed two incremental approach. Design A is based on motion-oriented and follows therapist's conventional cognitive model. It specifies a motion the therapist wants the patients to work on first, then expand into combined motion and a longterm goal.
Design B is goal-oriented on the other hand, since therapists have also indicated that starting with an ADL goal could benefit the assignment process and help with goal-tracking.
Progress & Compliance Tracking
Patient Overview page presents:
Weekly Compliance, showing if patients perform the exercise on a daily and weekly basis and the percentage to which they successfully perform motions.
AROM progress, visualizing Active Range of Motion of patients in 6 parts of upper limbs by presenting initial and current progress in colored hexagons.
Check-in is designed in two columns:
Primary column: provide comment, self-reported mood, compliance data from patient, enabling therapist to respond
Secondary column: provide reference to past history and pre-written phrases
Design System
To ensure we accommodate users of various abilities, we utilized Google's Materials Design for colors, grid, and space and designed for dark and light mode. We crafted a universal set of buttons and icons to maintain a sense of consistency.
MVP Usability Testing
To evaluate the overall usability of task flows, we conducted moderated usability testings with all the pages, and A/B versions for exercise programs.
After synthesizing the insights from the testings, we incorporated a few iterations. Since we found positive reviews on some parts of A and B flows, such as A's overall easiness on navigation and B's visualization of the ADLs, we combined them.
Results
We conducted a total of 5 usability testing and received the following positive feedback:
💬 "It's easy to navigate, which is hard to do for a patient's program."
💬 " I feel that it gives more control to follow up with my patient."
We received a 90% average user validation throughout testing and a 75% improved understanding of wearable device usage.